Edith Wharton captures the reader by her descriptive sense of style. The critic J. D. Thomas comments that Wharton uses beautiful artistic writing to describe the setting of Ethan Frome’s world filled with snowdrifts, sledges and struggle (Thomas 386). This is demonstrated in the passage: The night was perfectly still, and the air so dry and pure that it gave little sensation of cold. The effects produced on Frome was rather of a complete absence …showed first 75 words of 351 total…

…showed last 75 words of 351 total…s narrowmindedness and ignorance. And what good had come of it? She was a hundred times bitterer and more discontented than when he had married her: the one pleasure left her was to inflict pain on him. All the healthy instincts of self defence rose up in him against such a waste (Wharton 1). Wharton “paints” a vivid picture of Ethan Frome and what his life was like being poor and married to the shrewish Zeena.